WikiLeaks Leaks TPP Intellectual Property Section

TPP critic Fight for the Future was seeing red after WikiLeaks leaked the intellectual property section of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement struck last weekend.

TPP is a historic Pacific Rim trade agreement with 11 other countries that TV and film producers have been pushing for as a way to expand trade and access to Asia-Pacific markets.

WikiLeaks said it was releasing the section "due to its wide-ranging effects on internet services, medicines, publishers, civil liberties and biological patents." Fight for the Future has argued that TPP was big business giveaway with "extreme copyright provisions."

The digital rights group said the leak only buttressed that argument. "The text of the TPP's intellectual property chapter confirms advocates warnings that this deal poses a grave threat to global freedom of expression and basic access to things like medicine and information."

It called for defunding the U.S. Trade Representative. "Appointed government bureaucrats and monopolistic companies were given more access to the text than elected officials and journalists; from the outset there was no way this was going to be a good deal for the public."

Fight for the Future was an active opponent of the SOPA privacy legislation and pushed hard for FCC network neutrality rules.